Hundreds of federal scientists responding to a survey said they had been asked to exclude or alter information for non-scientific reasons and thousands said they had been prevented from speaking to the media. [emphasis mine]

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), which commissioned the survey from Environics Research “to gauge the scale and impact of ‘muzzling’ and political interference among federal scientists,” released the results Monday at a news conference.

The union sent invitations to 15,398 federal scientists in June, asking them to participate in the survey. More than 4,000 took part. [emphasis mine]

PIPSC represents 60,000 public servants across the country, including 20,000 scientists, in federal departments and agencies, including scientists involved in food and consumer product safety and environmental monitoring.

Weirdly, the news item announces hundreds of scientists responded to follow up later stating that a number exceeding 4000 took part.

The survey, the findings of which are included in a new report titled The Big Chill, is the first extensive effort to gauge the scale and impact of “muzzling” and political interference among federal scientists since the Harper government introduced communications policies requiring them to seek approval before being interviewed by journalists. Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is currently conducting her own investigation of the policies, which have been widely criticized for silencing scientists, suppressing information critical or contradictory of government policy, and delaying timely, vital information to the media and public.

In particular, the survey also found that nearly one-quarter (24%) of respondents had been directly asked to exclude or alter information for non-scientific reasons and that over one-third (37%) had been prevented in the past five years from responding to questions from the public and media.

In addition, the survey found that nearly three out of every four federal scientists (74%) believe the sharing of scientific findings has become too restricted in the past five years and that nearly the same number (71%) believe political interference has compromised Canada’s ability to develop policy, law and programs based on scientific evidence. According to the survey, nearly half (48%) are aware of actual cases in which their department or agency suppressed information, leading to incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading impressions by the public, industry and/or other government officials.

“Federal scientists are facing a climate of fear,” says PIPSC president Gary Corbett, “- a chill brought on by government policies that serve no one’s interests, least of all those of the Canadian public. The safety of our food, air, water, of hundreds of consumer and industrial products, and our environment depends on the ability of federal scientists to provide complete, unbiased, timely and accurate information to Canadians. Current policies must change to ensure these objectives are met.”

For anyone interested in seeing the survey and report, you can download it from PIPSC’s The Big Chill webpage.

In this context, the Science and Society 2013 symposium (S&S 2013) being held in Ottawa (site of the PIPSC [an S&S 2013 sponsor] Oct. 21, 2013news conference), is livestreaming a few events for the public (ones at 7 pm) and those intended for symposium attendees only. From an Oct. 18, 2013 announcement about the S&S 2013 live events,

WATCH THESE LIVE ONLINE!

MONDAY OCT. 21, 7PM ET
Transformations in the Relations between Science, Policy and Citizens
Yves Gingras, Canada Research Chair in History and Sociology of Science, UQAM

Apparently, you can go here to click through to the events being livestreamed. (It looks like I grumbled too soon about the public not being allowed to attend any of the symposium talks outside the evening events specifically designated for the public. Thank you!)

Co-organized by the Situating Science SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster (www.situsci.ca) and the University of Ottawa’s Institute for Science, Society and Policy (www.issp.uottawa.ca), the Science and Society 2013 symposium aims tounderstand and address the key issues at the interface of science, technology, society and policy.

The event will connect disparate themes and bring different groups with shared interests together to brainstorm solutions to common challenges. It will demonstrate that collaboration among academics, students, policy makers, stakeholders and the public at large can lead to new insights and a deeper understanding of the social and cultural contexts of science and technology.

The symposium aims to make the discussion of science and technology and their place in society more prominent in the national dialogue, notably through the publication of a symposium report containing recommendations on how to understand and improve the science-society interface and improve science policy. This document will be distributed among media and key decision makers.

The traditional relations between scientists, policy makers and citizens have been transformed over the last fifteen years. Scientists were used to providing science for policy makers who were eager to listen, while citizens were relatively confident in the judgments of scientists. Using recent cases of scientific and public controversies, we will show that citizens have more power now than ever before to influence policies in matters relating to scientific research. This raises the pressing issue for us as citizens: How do we give a central place to a scientific culture that is adapted to the 21st century?

Yves Gingras
Canada Research Chair in the History and Sociology of Science
Université du Québec à Montréal

The Situating Science national Strategic Knowledge Cluster with the University of Ottawa Institute for Science, Society and Policy invite you to join us for a professionally staged reading of selections from Michael Frayn’s acclaimed play Copenhagen, which will be interwoven with expert panel discussions moderated by science broadcaster and author, Jay Ingram.

Copenhagen is based on the final meeting of Nobel-Prize winning physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in the midst of the 1940s War effort. The issues it raises concerning science, ethics and politics are as pressing as ever.

Stage readings by: Tibor Egervari, Peter Hawaorth, and Beverly Wolfe

Panelists:
Dr. Ted Hsu, Member of Parliament for Kingston and the Islands, Science and Technology Critic for the Liberal Party of Canada

Not in Ottawa? Some select symposium events will be availble to watch online live (no registration needed). Stay tuned to the event website for more.

This symposium, save for the three public evening events, appears to be for invitees only (there’s no symposium registration page). Presumably nobody wants any members of the public or strangers present when the invitees discuss such topics as these (from the symposium programme):

Science and Its Publics: Dependence, Disenchantment, and Deliverance [emphasis mins]

Desmarais Building Rm. 12

-

102

Chair: Dr. Gordon McOuat, Situating Science

Speaker: Dr. Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard Kennedy School

…

Session 1a: Science and Democracy [emphasis mine]

Desmarais Building Rm. 12

-

102

Chair/Speaker: Dr. Heather Douglas, Waterloo

Speakers:

Dr. Frédéric Bouchard, U. de Montréal

Dr. Patrick Feng, U. Calgary

…

Science, Policy and Citizens: How to improve the Science/Society interface [emphasis mine]

Desmarais Building Rm. 12 – 102

Chairs: Dr. Marc Saner, ISSP and Dr. Gordon McOuat, Situating Science

Speakers: Rapporteurs from previous sessions

It seems odd to be discussing democracy, citizenship, and science without allowing the public to attend any of the sessions. Meanwhile, the symposium’s one and only science and media session features two speakers, Penny Park of the Science Media Centre of Canada and Ivan Semeniuk of the Globe and Mail, who are firmly ensconced members of the mainstream media with no mention of anything else (science blogs?). Arguably, science bloggers could be considered relevant to these discussions since research suggests that interested members of the public are searching for science information online (in blogs and elsewhere) in in increasing numbers. I hope to get a look at the documentation once its been published, assuming there will be public access.

I very much enjoyed and appreciated the 2012 S.NET (Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies) conference in Enschede, Netherlands from Oct. 22-25, 2012. It was my first nano-themed conference and I suffered from an embarrassment of riches so what follows is just a sliver of the available presentation offerings and my opinions.

I’m sad to say that I have no sensible notes from the opening plenary (‘Emerging technologies — From Technology Push to Societal Pull’ with Dave Blank, Christos Tokamanis, and Pat Mooney on a panel moderated by Arie Rip) largely due to the fact that I’d been travelling continuously for about 15 or 16 hours by then and had trouble absorbing information. The next day was much better.

Public risk perceptions: Mary Collins talking about the Nanopants attack (protest) and about scientists’ approaches to public communication about nanotechnology risks ; Frederico Neresini discussing perceptions in Italy; and Craig Cormick providing more details about the nanosunscreen debacle in Australia.

Mary Collins (University of California at Santa Barbara) presented her work analyzing the various points of view from the science and non-science communities regarding discussions of public risk. She noted there is still concern that the GMO (genetically modified organisms) movement could happen again with nanotechnology and scientists are devoutly interested in avoiding this circumstance. By and large, most scientists want to promote some discussion about risks as a means of avoiding a ‘GMO disaster’ although there is no universal agreement as to which groups/social communities should be apprised. Some scientists favour elite groups only while others prefer a more universal dissemination of information. Collins noted that it is very difficult to find any documentation of scientists espousing the belief that communication of risk should be nonexistent. One audience member noted that a policy of suppressing discussion could be inferred by the lack of media coverage for an activist protest known as the ‘Nanopants attack’. Wired Magazine appears to have been the only media outlet to have covered the event by featuring a June 10, 2005 article by Howard Lovy,

On a chilly Chicago afternoon in early May, environmental activists sauntered into the Eddie Bauer store on Michigan Avenue, headed to the broad storefront windows opening out on the Magnificent Mile and proceeded to take off their clothes.

The strip show aimed to expose more than skin: Activists hoped to lay bare growing allegations of the toxic dangers of nanotechnology. The demonstrators bore the message in slogans painted on their bodies, proclaiming “Eddie Bauer hazard” and “Expose the truth about nanotech,” among other things, in light of the clothing company’s embrace of nanotech in its recent line of stain-resistant “nanopants.”

Frederico Neresini, University of Padua (Italy), discussed some of his work polling for attitudes toward nanotechnology risk and his tentative hypothesis that the more public debate there is on the topic, the more important trustworthiness becomes. Trust was discussed many times and in many contexts at the conference and seemed to be an emergent theme.

Craig Cormick, Australian Dept. of Innovation, discussed the surprising results of a recent poll in Australia which showed that 13% of the population doesn’t use any sunscreen due to concern about nanoscale ingredients (this finding was mentioned at more length in my Feb. 9, 2012 posting). He also noted that he was on the receiving end of some very personal attacks once this information was released. I hadn’t realized it was coincidental but, almost simultaneously, there was another project (analyzing sunscreens available on the Australian market for nanoscale ingredients) where they announced findings of many more sunscreens with nanoscale ingredients than were labelled as such. There weren’t many new details for public consumption but it was interesting to hear a first hand account. Cormick did offer a provocative idea during the session, ‘apply the precautionary principle to your risk messages’.

Chris Groves of Cardiff University (Wales) offered a lunchtime plenary talk titled, ‘Horizons of care: from future imaginaries to responsible innovation’. We were treated to a discussion of philosophy which featured Hegel and Deleuze amongst others. What I found most intriguing were Groves’ contentions that ‘vision’ is a problematic metaphor; that living in an ‘age of innovation’ means living in an ‘age of surprises'; and that science interprets the world by looking into the past. His quote from Hannah Arendt, “What we make remakes us” brought home the notion that there is a feedback loop and that science and invention are not unidirectional pursuits, i.e., we do not create the world and stand apart from it; the world we create, in turn, recreates us.

I was particularly taken with one of his last comments, ‘mapping as a metaphor for colonizing the future’. I’ve long been interested by the frequency of ‘mapping’ as a metaphor in scientific pursuits (mapping the genome, amongst many others). His comment reminded me that the great mapping bonanzas are associated with ‘colonizing’ various continents.

A big thank you is due to

US National Science Foundation,

the University of California at Santa Barbara (Valerie Kuan and Barbara Herr Harthorn),

the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars,

Simon Fraser University,

Luinda Bleackley,

Teresa McDowell,

Zoey Ryan,

Susan Baxter,

Helen Dewar,

Debora Gordon, and

Doug Setter

all of whose financial support helped me get to the conference. I am deeply grateful.

I want to thank the organizers for a sumptuous conference not only in content but also in execution. They even managed to cater most of our meals, which made life ever so much easier. In particular, I want to thank Marcia Clifford and Evelien Rietberg of the local organizing committee for their patience and help as I fumbled about on my arrival.

Part 2: Yet again, I discover information about Canadian nanotechnology efforts through European sources.

ETA Nov. 1, 2012: I made a minor grammatical correction in the section about Chris Groves’ talk and I should mention that I never did quite grasp the relationship of ‘care’ to the concepts he presented.